


Fealty

by phnelt



Series: Throne Gays [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Pining, Queen in the North, exchange treat, is it mutual? you decide, post-s8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-29 21:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21416758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phnelt/pseuds/phnelt
Summary: “You hate me,” Jaime said, with some surprise. It was almost insulting -- did he think he had endeared himself to her?“I couldn’t say,” Sansa said and allowed herself a small smirk, “On this topic, you should really ask Arya. I believe she keeps a list.”
Relationships: Sansa Stark/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Throne Gays [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1469861
Comments: 8
Kudos: 95
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Fealty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mazily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazily/gifts).

> Thanks to scintilla10 for the beta! 
> 
> Written for mazily for femslash exchange, 2019.

Too late, Sansa saw Jaime approach her on the ramparts. She’d been observing the training of the new Northern recruits; everyone who could hold a sharp object was enlisted to defend Winterfell against the army of the dead. It wasn’t enough, and the food wouldn’t last, but they had to try because what other option was there. It really infuriated her, that the Starks survived four Kings and being exiled to the corners of the world and it was the winter that was going to kill them. The echo of her father’s voice reverberated with the fall of every snowflake. All of these Southern squabbles had been a deadly distraction. 

She didn’t need Jaime Lannister on top of her other problems. 

Sansa turned to go but he was too fast for her to get away inconspicuously. If she left now there was no way to do it subtly and it would cause a scene. Everyone could see them standing up there, all of her men and Daenerys’, uneasily standing next to each other. No one needed to see the fractures in the alliances, any more than was obvious, so she stayed, acknowledging him with a head tilt. She had to project calm and confidence, like she was riding an anxious horse. 

“Lady Stark,” he said, bowing. 

“Ser Jaime,” she said and his mouth shut with a click; he had clearly not been expecting the title. A blissful moment of silence reigned. Unfortunately it was only a moment. 

“You’re a hard woman to get a moment with,” Jaime said. 

She sighed. “What do you want?” She hated asking questions like that. It meant she didn’t have the answer already. 

“Since I’m here in your castle, I’m here to see if I can be of service.” 

“I’m sure you can,” she said, and left it at that. 

“You see, no one is willing to give me a job without your say-so; apparently you have everything quite locked down.” 

“Is that so.” Her intonation made it clear it wasn’t a question. She kept watching the training. He bored her. It was a long time since he’d been one of her tormentors, and always a pale shadow in comparison to his sister. His attempts to needle her were amateurish at best. 

“You hate me,” Jaime said, with some surprise. It was almost insulting -- did he think he had endeared himself to her? 

“I couldn’t say,” Sansa said and allowed herself a small smirk, “On this topic, you should really ask Arya. I believe she keeps a list.” Sansa was impressed with the progress Arya had made on her list, how short it had become. Sansa wondered what Arya would do when her list was complete; she wondered no such thing for herself, if life had taught her anything it was that there was always going to be an extra name to add. 

“No, no,” Jaime said, waving her away, “not a list of family grievances. You hate me, personally. Why?” 

“You were in King’s Landing. You saw.” Sansa hated that she was engaging with him, but she couldn’t help herself. Despite being the oldest, these wounds were the hardest to ignore. He had been there to watch the beginning of all the cruelty. He had been there when it would have been easiest to stop, and he had done nothing. 

He was squinting at her, it made his eyes look tiny and beady, like a grubby pig. “Well, yes, I suppose, but I was mostly held captive by your brother during the time you were a guest there.” 

She allowed herself the luxury of closing her eyes for a second. She’d forgotten about the flippancy. Everyone in the North was so earnest, verging on dour. She’d become unused to treating everything like it was a joke, nothing of consequence. But one never really forgot and she felt the familiar pull of it like the weight of an old cloak. 

Jaime continued, “Though I suppose my captivity did end when my family had your family murdered. There really are oceans of blood between us, aren’t there.” 

She raised an eyebrow, wry, falling back into the patterns of callousness -- parry, riposte, the dead don’t mean anything -- despite herself. 

“So why allow me to stay, hmm? You’d rather chew glass than endure my presence and vouching for me didn’t endear you to your dragon queen. Seems rather a lose-lose scenario.” 

Involuntarily, her eyes cut to the courtyard where Brienne was showing basic sword forms to the farmers and herders she’d been given to shape into warriors. Brienne brushed her fringe out of her forehead, it clung to her skin. She helped a man who was barely more than a boy, gently correcting his grip. There was no one in the world who was as beautiful in that moment than Brienne, utterly in her element. Jaime, of course, caught the motion and followed her gaze to where it landed. 

She cursed her complacency. She was rusty in the ways of intrigue, and she knew it. 

“Ah.” She didn’t dare look at him to interpret what he meant and kept her eyes fixed on the courtyard, staring so hard her gaze became unfocused. Perhaps he pitied her; if he did, it would be his mistake. And if he thought he could hold this over her, he was sorely mistaken. 

“You aren’t going to tell her,” she said, confidently. She turned to face him. 

He seemed taken aback. “Why not?” 

“Because I’m not going to be the one who forces her to choose.” She took a step towards him. “Brienne asked me for you -- to be her diversion, her plaything, for whatever reason of her own. Some misplaced sense of fairness, or pity. She can have you, if that’s what she wants.” She took another step and he stepped back. “But she’s my bondswoman. All of her vows are mine.” 

Sansa trusted he could figure the rest out for himself. Brienne had sworn herself to Sansa, to follow her orders, and that meant Jaime was welcome under Sansa’s sufferance alone. Sansa could revoke her forgiveness at any time and cast him out — but she was telling Jaime that she would not. If she did, Sansa would be acting dishonourably and Brienne might be within her rights to slink off with him. But if she didn’t, if she watched Jaime run himself into the ground making a fuss, then he would be revealed as craven and unworthy of Brienne’s time. 

Sansa would not be the wedge that forced Jaime out; Jaime would have to do it to himself. 

Jaime would have to live knowing Brienne was always compromised in her loyalty to him. He would never come first for Brienne; Sansa would see to it. He could take those terms, or he could leave. 

“Go,” she said, utterly done with this man. 

He fled. 

*** 

Sansa could never have predicted that Jaime Lannister would triumph over her from beyond the grave. 

*** 

Brienne told her: “I have a duty to rebuild the Kingdom.” 

She said: “Your brother needs my help.” 

Brienne said: “I am a knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” 

_Something that Jaime Lannister made her._

Sansa was caught in her own promise. The vows that Brienne cast aside still bound Sansa tighter than any chain. _I will ask no service of you that will cause you dishonour._ She could not make Brienne stay. Sansa could not be the one who tore Brienne in two just to keep her close. 

And so she watched Brienne walk away. 

*** 

Bran sent her letters. He abused the raven system to send her random notes and she was half convinced he rode inside the raven to see them delivered and see her reaction to them. 

Sansa assumed the letters were being surveilled by some sort of suborned member of her household, whether to the Kingdom in the south or some disgruntled Northern lord -- or at least she assumed that until a maid went to tidy her desk and reared back like she was burned when her fingers barely touched one of Bran’s missives. 

One does not risk anything with the Three-Eyed Raven, was the takeaway. At least on her side of the border. She began to assume no one in her camp was reading anything. Tyrion feared nothing so she had to assume he read everything, but that didn’t bother her too much. She hoped he was scouring for codes and hidden messages in every random bit that Bran churned out. _‘Today two crows flew past the sept crater. They could not find any nuts.’ _Or, _‘Our grandfather invented a game that involved balancing two corks on the tip of a lance. It was a true game of skill.’_

And they played cyvasse, long distance. 

She hadn’t learned it before, but she thought she was getting better. 

She’d started looking forward to Bran’s letters, espionage be damned, until Bran started getting a little mono-focused in his letters. 

_‘Sansa -- today Ser Brienne ordered the re-organisation of the armory. Many of the crossbows had been allowed to rot.’_

_‘Ser Brienne has mastered the beginnings of Water Dancing and is able to defeat all of the apprentices above her level.’_

_‘Finally, Ser Brienne has updated the Book of Brothers.’_

Sometimes he’d throw in a bit of his usual historical anecdata for spice. _‘When they initially met, King Torrhen only kneeled to Aegon the Conqueror with the understanding that the North would remain independent.’ _Which Sansa took as either a threat or a warning about the precarity of the sovereignty of the North. 

But then he was immediately back on his favourite topic. _‘Ser Brienne changed her hair.’ _No other details, not even a sketch so Sansa could judge what it looked like. 

Her face burned when she thought of what Tyrion and his whisperers were gleaning from this. Maybe they thought Bran was in love with Brienne, but Sansa didn’t think she was so lucky. 

*** 

Her main distraction from Bran’s unsettling missives was the logistics for upcoming negotiations between the Northern Kingdom and Westeros. Functionally, the North had been mostly independent from the South already due to its isolation. They were not dependent on the South for food, and, since the winter had ended, they did not need military protection. Yet there were still a shocking number of details that had to be worked out. Who controlled the King’s Road? Who could travel on it? There were many topics that were generally important to the north but then there were others that were more personal to Sansa that she needed to see resolved on a visceral, emotional level. 

Such as what became of the Night’s Watch in the absence of the Wall and the White Walkers. 

Sansa threw herself into the planning, despite knowing that every day she was a day closer to coming face-to-face with Brienne again -- King Bran could not travel without his Lord Commander, after all. 

*** 

Bran couldn’t say anything to her during the negotiations. They sat next to each other, but separated by an aisle and multiple metres of decorative cloth set up in the castle hall at Riverrun. They sat there and said nothing as their chamberlains and functionaries spoke for them. It was their regal duty to oversee the negotiations, so Sansa cultivated stillness and studiously worked to avoid their uncle during their brief adjournments, and generally failed to stop herself glancing at Brienne who stood, immovable, behind Bran and stared stone-faced at the proceedings. 

She and Bran had to wait to sneak away from everyone’s watchful eye until the interminable first day was over. By pre-arrangement, Sansa came to his rooms via a back passage that their mother had shown them when they had been old enough to understand that sometimes their family might need to get away. 

“Wine?” Bran asked, gesturing at the sideboard. She shook her head. She preferred an ale, or mead, and the smell of wine after so long away from it turned her stomach. 

“You?” She offered. He shook his head. 

She sat down. “You got my letters,” he said. 

“Yes.” She had to ask, “Did Tyrion work out the code?” 

“No,” Bran’s lips quirked, “He has many comments about my cyvasse strategy.” 

Sansa smiled back. She supposed it was driving Tyrion to distraction that he hadn’t worked them out, or that he assumed Bran was apparently bad at cyvasse. She wasn’t sure which would cause him more distress. She allowed herself to relax, just a little, and asked, “How have you been, Bran?” 

She wanted to hear about him and, just for a little while, feel like he wasn’t so far away from her. She never regretted her decision to stay in the North and protect it, but she could allow herself the occasional pang to think about what she missed when she dedicated herself to the independence of the North. She could have been Lady of Highgarden, like Margaery wanted, or could have sailed off with Arya. But in the end there hadn’t really been a choice for her -- for any of them, really. 

“I have not been,” Bran replied, “I simply am.” 

Sansa hadn’t missed his cryptic statements, but she wasn’t going to let it set her off. She was in too much of a good mood. “Then how are you?” 

He ignored her. “Do you remember, what I said about the North?” 

“Which thing, Bran? You told me about where they quarried the stones for Winterfell. You told me many things.” 

“When our ancestor kneeled to Aegon, he did not fully cede sovereignty for the North.” 

Sansa remembered. “I don’t plan on bringing that up in the negotiations if you’re concerned. It only complicates things.” 

He looked at her, as impassive as always. “Facts have never mattered when it comes to politics.” 

Sansa pressed her lips together grimly, “Neither have agreements.” 

Bran inclined his head. “But the fact remains, even so. Any vows sworn to the Queen in the North would not transfer to the rest of the Kingdoms of Westeros. They are not, and have never been, one and the same.” 

She understood what he was saying, but. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not about the fact of the thing, or the agreements, it’s about what she _wants_.” Sansa knew this better than anyone. “She has to want to be with me or I’ll never have truly her.” She resisted the impulse to cover her hands with her face, a childish desire that she’d thought King’s Landing had long since beaten out of her. 

She straightened instead and sniffed, just once. “She made it clear she doesn’t want. So.” Despite her hands being firmly in her lap the words somehow came out muffled like she had given in. 

“You’re wrong.” 

She frowned at him. “Have you been in people’s heads again? How would you know?” 

“Some things are known,” Bran said. She rolled her eyes. “Allow me to ask something of you.” 

Put like that, he was her brother and she couldn’t deny him and didn’t want to. “Anything,” _as long as it does not hurt the North, _as the unspoken corollary. 

“Take a walk in the woods tomorrow during the evening recess.” 

Immediately, she felt wary. “This is a trap.” She couldn’t see the spring or trigger, but she could sense the contours. 

He inclined his head. “Perhaps. Life is a trap,” Bran said. “If Ser Brienne is there, you will knowshe wants to come home.” 

Sansa didn’t want that hope. It would choke her. 

“Even if she wanted, she won’t.” The words were hard to get out. But it was already a concession. A bare handful of moments ago she’d stood firmly in the truth that Brienne had left, had shown how much she didn’t want her. 

Bran paused. “You’re afraid.” 

Yes, she was afraid, on some level she was always afraid, but how dare he speak to her like that? She was Sansa Stark, a wolf of the North, its sovereign Queen. She stiffened. 

Bran continued, “I am the Three-Eyed Raven, and I am King, but I am also Brandon Stark and you are Sansa Stark and I would not put you in unnecessary danger. Her vow to me is forfeit; it is now up to you. You can return to the North, alone, or you can present yourself to Brienne and let her decide how to proceed.” 

Sansa heard the silent rebuke there. She’d wanted Brienne to stay, but she’d never asked her to. She’d never given her a reason. She’d told Jaime he would never tell Brienne about Sansa’s attachment, and she hadn’t either. She’d been protecting Brienne, but she’d also protected herself. She was good at that, Sansa thought bitterly. She’d protected herself out of any chance she had for a future with Brienne. 

Except Bran was telling her otherwise. 

She took in a shuddering breath and stood to hug him. “I miss you,” she whispered into his ear. He grabbed her back, hands resting on her light as the wings of a bird and she stepped away. 

*** 

Despite everything Bran said, Sansa’s heart was hammering in her throat as she stood in the West Woods, waiting. Every branch that rustled sounded like oncoming footsteps, magnified inside her imagination. 

_Brienne was not going to come. _Sansa could not avoid the thought. She should leave now before she could be further humiliated. 

Her feet stayed rooted. 

How was she going to go back inside, knowing that this door was closed forever? 

But then a twig snapped. And another. And the leaves crunched, hard, unmistakably the sound of a human approaching. 

Sansa gathered all of her strength to turn and there she was. 

Brienne stood before her, resplendent in her armor, hair thrown by the wind and caught by the sun like a thousand filaments of gold. 

“Hello, Ser Brienne,” Sansa said. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments mean so much! Even copying a line you liked means a lot.


End file.
